


Not So Different

by MiniMenace



Category: THE iDOLM@STER, THE iDOLM@STER: SideM
Genre: Beit Family Enjoy Christmas, Gen, Side M Secret Santa 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 02:18:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17112575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniMenace/pseuds/MiniMenace
Summary: The names, and the places, and the details might change, but that didn't mean that the real heart of the celebration had to.(In which Pierre takes the stereotypes about Christmas in Japan maybe just a little bit too seriously, and forgets to trust in his friends as much as he should)





	Not So Different

**Author's Note:**

> This is my SideM Secret Santa gift for Phryne, @starrymomo__ on Twitter! Thank you so, so, so so so much for giving me an excuse to write Pierre. I hope this is soft enough for your liking!

It was weird, Pierre thought, that Christmas was so obviously a holiday for couples in Japan.

Even back home, where most of the religious significance had disappeared in all but the most devout households, the heart of the celebration had stayed the same. It was a day for family, and for friends, and for couples, of course, he guessed, but in a more… Platonic way. It was a day for togetherness.

Or at least that's what he'd heard.

Holiday celebrations were always a little bit different when you were part of a royal family.

But even among the ceremonies, and speeches, and formal dinners, and parties that somehow managed to be no fun at all, he still found little things to take joy in. He remembered the feeling of his brothers’ hands on his back the first time he was allowed to toast at Christmas dinner, and how hard it had been not to burst out laughing when his mother snuck funny faces at him across the long, long banquet table. He remembered the relief of being able to sneak out to one of the balconies with people his own age while the adults weren’t looking and complain about things no one else would understand.

But things were different here.

And Pierre had no right to judge.

There was still so much he didn’t know, which was just as exciting as it was strange and surprising. He had so many new traditions to learn and different ways of life to experience, and none of that would ever happen if he balked at new things and expected to be treated differently just because he was from a different place.

Which is why he was surprised to find that he got Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off without even asking. The previous day he saw everyone off with his usual “see you tomorrow,” and the producer had pointed to the office schedule board and told him that no, Pierre, you're not coming in tomorrow. 

And so Pierre ended up, well, not alone, exactly, on Christmas Eve. It was just him and his bodyguards in the grand home his family had gotten him to stay in.

It honestly would have been better if he'd just worked, considering that basically none of his friends were off that day.

W and HighXJoker all had school until the 27th, which, though it was absolutely unfathomable to Pierre, meant that they were busily trying to juggle their end-of-term schoolwork with their practices. Kanon had plans with his family that were taking him out of the country for the last half of December into January, and the cafe was swamped with reservations and special orders for the season, meaning that even Asselin had been too busy recently to spend any time with him. He had come by though, after the cafe had closed one night, carrying with him his “warmest yuletide greetings,” and “promises of surely grand festivities in the post-holiday season,” and other complicated sentences with long words that Pierre had kind of a difficult time understanding.

He also came with a cupcake from Soichiro, though, which made up for it.

Even Minori had an event on Christmas that he had been preparing for all month and Christmas Eve was his one day of rest before the big day. Kyoji was the only one he knew of who was completely free, and he had actually had the date taken off for quite a while, but Pierre still found himself... torn. Christmas was, for all intents and purposes, a holiday entirely for lovers in Japan, if Shiki was to be believed. It wasn’t the same as back home, and he knew how Minori and Kyoji were. If they had made any plans to spend time with anyone they almost definitely wouldn’t have told Pierre. 

So he hadn’t said a word to them all month. Not even anything about gifts. Nothing. He would be happy so long as he knew that they were spending the holiday with people they cared about.

And regardless, New Years was right around the corner, and the three of them had already made plenty of plans for the following week. Minori and Kyoji had promised to chaperone all the younger boys to a shrine to be there right when when it struck midnight, and Kyoji had pulled some strings with his old boss to get the biggest osechi he could delivered to the office, at a discount even. It was going to be awesome, he knew it.

It would only be a week.

He could wait.

Which is why he and his bodyguards were surprised to hear a knock at the door that night around seven, hours after the sun had gone down. He had been dozing in one of his big lounge chairs, having finished up his most recent kanji workbook, and jolted at the sound. He saw one of his bodyguards get up and head to the door, and heard the noise of it opening and closing. He didn’t hear any voices, so he figured it must have been a package, or a prank, and settled back in the chair, closing his eyes. He considered maybe just heading to bed early for the night, before he felt a hand make its way through his hair just roughly enough to bob his head around, and caught a whiff of the cinnamon scent that he recognized as Minori's favorite wintertime moisturizer.

When he opened his eyes he saw Minori crouched in front of him, and Kyoji turned away from him carrying what looked like a medium-sized cardboard box.

“I'm sorry if we woke you, Pierre, we didn't mean to be this late. It took us a little longer than we expected to get everything together.”

“Minori, Kyoji… You two do not work tomorrow?”

“Oh, I still have my performance tomorrow, but it's not until the evening. And Kyoji took today and tomorrow off almost a month ago just for this, didn't you?”

“Well, yeah. Christmas is actually, like, an important holiday in your country, right? I figured we could stay over tonight and then go somewhere tomorrow before Minori's thing. If that's, uh-”

Kyoji looked over at one of the bodyguards by the door, who solemnly nodded.

“If that's okay with you, Pierre.”

If that's okay with him?

How would it ever possibly not be okay with him?

It took him far longer than it should have to put his words together, and in the end all he could do was nod his head as enthusiastically as possible.

“Awesome. This would be kind of awkward otherwise,” Kyoji said, standing from what he had been taking out of the cardboard box.

Sitting on one of the end tables was a miniature tree, surrounded in little boxes and cards, and topped with one of the star insignias from their uniforms. It was tiny and white and shiny and plastic and completely undecorated, and Pierre absolutely loved it to little pieces.

“The guys were really sorry that they couldn't do anything today. They all tried to at least get you a card though. Some of them said they'd try to make it down after school tomorrow to say hey before Minori's performance.”

Pierre had been so focused on what he had heard and read about the holiday season in Japan, and so intent on giving Kyoji and Minori the space to spend time with someone they loved, that he hadn’t even considered that maybe that someone might be him. Relief flooded through him as soon as he wrapped his mind around what Kyoji had said, so strong it almost made him want to cry. But he couldn't, because he knew that if he cried then Minori would start crying, and Pierre hated it when Minori cried, even if it was a happy cry.

At that Minori took both of Pierre's hands and stood.

“Now a while back I think I remember Kyoji telling me that you have a recipe from home that's perfect for cold weather. Would you mind showing it to me? If you're missing any ingredients we can go down to the store and pick up anything you need.”

Pierre shook his head, hoping to clear his eyes, and popped up from the chair.

“Nope! Have everything we need, I think! I will try to remember.”

So Pierre and Minori busied themselves in the kitchen, googling recipes and trying to figure out what could be substituted for what. Kyoji snuck out somewhere in the middle, returning some half and hour later with their main dish for the night, some real-life Christmas fried chicken. Pierre would be the first to admit that, yeah, he did actually get a little overexcited at that, but he loved it whenever Kyoji and Minori went out of their way to include him in some tradition he'd never heard of. And even though it happened often, almost every holiday came with a new lesson and a new experience, for whatever reason this time was even more exciting than usual.

The rest of the night, was, honestly, nothing out of the ordinary. They had sleepovers like this rather regularly, even before they'd become idols, so any awkwardness that he might have felt had it been anyone else was replaced by a warm feeling of togetherness. Minori was adamant that Pierre not touch any of the gifts that night, no, not even the cards, it’s tradition, it's bad enough that we did Santa's job for him before you even went to sleep.

So while that left Pierre with a disproportionate amount of anticipation for the next day, he still found himself dozing on the couch within an hour of finishing dinner, wrapped up to the neck in blankets between his two favorite people, half-listening to a movie he only sort of understood. He could feel the rise and fall of Kyoji breathing from where he had his head perched on his shoulder, and he could occasionally feel Minori reach out and run a hand through his hair, or brush it out of his face, or tuck it behind his ear. 

The last thing he thought before he finally nodded off was that this was perhaps the most perfect way to spend the holiday.

Christmas was a day for family, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> A family can just be two dads and their frog prince son.
> 
> Follow me on Twitter @MiniskirtMenace for more Important Beit Family Thoughts like "Minori Watanabe I Have Feelings For You" and "Please Official Side M Artists make Pierre just a little bit gangly he's a teenage boy not a baby I am begging you."


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